down and considered. The web of a lifelong service and devotion still
clung about her, but she was bereft of the creature for whom it had been
spun. Now she was quite alone, save for her two brothers and the cousins
who lived in other townships, and they all had homes of their own. Lucy
Ann sat still, and thought about her life. Brother Ezra and brother John
would be good to her. They always had been. Their solicitude redoubled
with her need, and they had even insisted on leaving Annabel, John's
daughter, to keep her company after the funeral. Lucy Ann thought
longingly of the healing which lay in the very loneliness of her little
house; but she yielded, with a patient sigh. John and Ezra were
men-folks, and doubtless they knew best.
A little more than a week had gone when school "took up," rather earlier
than had been intended, and Annabel went away in haste, to teach. Then
Lucy Ann drew her first long breath. She had resisted many a kindly
office from her niece, with the crafty innocence of the gentle who can
only parry and never thrust. When Annabel wanted to help in packing away
grandma's things, aunt Lucy agreed, half-heartedly, and then deferred
the task from day to day. In reality, Lucy Ann never meant to pack them
away at all. She could not imagine her home without them; but that,
Annabel would not understand, and her aunt pushed aside the moment,
reasoning that something is pretty sure to happen if you put things off
long enough. And something did; Annabel went away. It was then that Lucy
Ann took a brief draught of the cup of peace.
Long before her mother's death, when they both knew how inevitably it
was coming, Lucy Ann had, one day, a little shock of surprise. She was
standing before the glass, coiling her crisp gray hair, and thinking
over and over the words the doctor had used, the night before, when he
told her how near the end might be. Her delicate face fell into deeper
lines. Her mouth dropped a little at the corners; her faded brown eyes
were hot with tears, and stopping to wipe them, she caught sight of
herself in the glass.
"Why," she said aloud, "I look jest like mother!"
And so she did, save that it was the mother of five years ago, before
disease had corroded the dear face, and patience wrought its tracery
there.
"Well," she continued, smiling a little at the poverty of her state, "I
shall be a real comfort to me when mother's gone!"
Now that her moment of solitude had struck, grief came also. It glided
in, and sat down by her, to go forth no more, save perhaps under its
other guise of a patient hope. She rocked back and forth in her chair,
and moaned a little to herself.
"Oh, I never can bear it!" she said pathetically, under her breath. "I
never can bear it in the world!"
The tokens of illness were all put away. Her mother's bedroom lay cold
in an unsmiling order. The ticking of the clock emphasized the
inexorable silence of the house. Once Lucy Ann thought she heard a
little rustle and stir. It seemed the most natural thing in the world,
coming from the bedroom, where one movement of the clothes had always
been enough to summon her with flying feet. She caught her breath, and
held it, to listen. She was ready, undisturbed, for any sign. But a
great fly buzzed drowsily on the pane, and the fire crackled with
accentuated life. She was quite alone. She put her hand to her heart, in
that gesture of grief which is so entirely natural when we feel the stab
of destiny; and then she went wanly into the sitting-room, looking about
her for some pretense of duty to solace her poor mind. There again she
caught sight of herself in the glass.
"Oh, my!" breathed Lucy Ann. Low as they were, the words held a fullness
of joy.
Her face had been aging through these days of grief; it had grown more
and more like her mother's. She felt as if a hand had been stretched out
to her, holding a gift, and at that moment something told her how to
make the gift enduring. Running over to the little table where her
mother's work-basket stood, as it had been, undisturbed, she took out a
pair of scissors, and went back to the glass. There she let down her
thick gray hair, parted it carefully on the sides, and cut off lock
after lock about her face. She looked a caricature of her sober self.
But she was well used to curling hair like this, drawing its crisp
silver into shining rings; and she stood patiently before the glass and
coaxed her own locks into just such fashion as had framed the older
face. It was done, and Lucy Ann looked at herself with a smile all
suffused by love and longing. She was not herself any more; she had gone
back a generation, and chosen a warmer niche. She could have kissed her
face in the glass, it was so like that other dearer one. She did finger
the little curls, with a reminiscent passion, not daring to think of the
darkness where the others had been shut; and, at that instant, she felt
very rich. The change suggested a more faithful portraiture, and she
went up into the spare room and looked through the closet where her
mother's clothes had been hanging so long, untouched. Selecting a purple
thibet, with a little white sprig, she slipped off her own dress, and
stepped into it. She crossed a muslin kerchief on her breast, and pinned
it with the cameo her mother had been used to wear. It was impossible to
look at herself in the doing; but when the deed was over, she went again
to the glass and stood there, held by a wonder beyond her will. She had
resurrected the creature she loved; this was an enduring portrait,
perpetuating, in her own life, another life as well.
"I'll pack away my own clo'es to-morrer," said Lucy Ann to herself.
"Them are the ones to be put aside."
She went downstairs, hushed and tremulous, and seated herself again, her
thin hands crossed upon her lap; and there she stayed, in a pleasant
dream, not of the future, and not even of the past, but face to face
with a recognition of wonderful possibilities. She had dreaded her
loneliness with the ache that is despair; but she was not lonely any
more. She had been allowed to set up a little model of the tabernacle
where she had worshiped; and, having that, she ceased to be afraid. To
sit there, clothed in such sweet familiarity of line and likeness, had
tightened her grasp upon the things that are. She did not seem to
herself altogether alive, nor was her mother dead. They had been fused,
by some wonderful alchemy; and instead of being worlds apart, they were
at one. So, John Cummings, her brother, stepping briskly in, after tying
his horse at the gate, came upon her unawares, and started, with a
hoarse, thick cry. It was in the dusk of evening; and, seeing her
outline against the window, he stepped back against the wall and leaned
there a moment, grasping at the casing with one hand. "Good God!" he
breathed, at last, "I thought 't was mother!"
Lucy Ann rose, and went forward to meet him.
"Then it's true," said she. "I'm so pleased. Seems as if I could git
along, if I could look a little mite like her."
John stood staring at her, frowning in his bewilderment.
"What have you done to yourself?" he asked. "Put on her clo'es?"
"Yes," said Lucy Ann, "but that ain't all. I guess I do resemble mother,
though we ain't any of us had much time to think about it. Well, I _am_
pleased. I took out that daguerreotype she had, down Saltash way, though
it don't favor her as she was at the end. But if I can take a glimpse of
myself in the glass, now and then, mebbe I can git along."
They sat down together in the dark, and mused over old memories. John
had always understood Lucy Ann better than the rest. When she gave up
Simeon Bascom to stay at home with her mother, he never pitied her much;
he knew she had chosen the path she loved. The other day, even, some one
had wondered that she could have heard the funeral service so unmoved;
but he, seeing how her face had seemed to fade and wither at every word,
guessed what pain was at her heart. So, though his wife had sent him
over to ask how Lucy Ann was getting on, he really found out very
little, and felt how painfully dumb he must be when he got home. Lucy
Ann was pretty well, he thought he might say. She'd got to looking a
good deal like mother.
They took their "blindman's holiday," Lucy Ann once in a while putting a
stick on the leaping blaze, and, when John questioned her, giving a
low-toned reply. Even her voice had changed. It might have come from
that bedroom, in one of the pauses between hours of pain, and neither
would have been surprised.
"What makes you burn beech?" asked John, when a shower of sparks came
crackling at them.
"I don't know," she answered. "Seems kind o' nat'ral. Some of it got
into the last cord we bought, an' one night it snapped out, an' most
burnt up mother's nightgown an' cap while I was warmin' 'em. We had a
real time of it. She scolded me, an' then she laughed, an' I
laughed--an' so, when I see a stick or two o' beech to-day, I kind o'
picked it out a-purpose."
John's horse stamped impatiently from the gate, and John, too, knew it
was time to go. His errand was not done, and he balked at it.
"Lucy Ann," said he, with the bluntness of resolve, "what you goin' to
do?"
Lucy Ann looked sweetly at him through the dark. She had expected that.
She smoothed her mother's dress with one hand, and it gave her courage.
"Do?" said she; "why, I ain't goin' to do nothin'. I've got enough to
pull through on."
"Yes, but where you goin' to live?"
"Here."
"Alone?"
"I don't feel so very much alone," said she, smiling to herself. At that
moment she did not. All sorts of sweet possibilities had made themselves
real. They comforted her, like the presence of love.
John felt himself a messenger. He was speaking for others that with
which his soul did not accord.
"The fact is," said he, "they're all terrible set ag'inst it. They say
you're gittin' along in years. So you be. So are we all. But they will
have it, it ain't right for you to live on here alone. Mary says she
should be scairt to death. She wants you should come an' make it your
home with us."
"Yes, I dunno but Mary would be scairt," said Lucy Ann placidly. "But I
ain't. She's real good to ask me; but I can't do it, no more'n she could
leave you an' the children an' come over here to stay with me. Why,
John, this is my home!"
Her voice sank upon a note of passion. It trembled with memories of dewy
mornings and golden eves. She had not grown here, through all her youth
and middle life, like moss upon a rock, without fitting into the hollows
and softening the angles of her poor habitation. She had drunk the
sunlight and the rains of one small spot, and she knew how both would
fall. The place, its sky and clouds and breezes, belonged to her: but
she belonged to it as well.
John stood between two wills, his own and that of those who had sent
him. Left to himself, he would not have harassed her. To him, also,
wedded to a hearth where he found warmth and peace, it would have been
sweet to live there always, though alone, and die by the light of its
dying fire. But Mary thought otherwise, and in matters of worldly
judgment he could only yield.
"I don't want you should make a mistake," said he. "Mebbe you an' I
don't look for'ard enough. They say you'll repent it if you stay, an'
there'll be a hurrah-boys all round. What say to makin' us a visit?
That'll kind o' stave it off, an' then we can see what's best to be
done."
Lucy Ann put her hands to her delicate throat, where her mother's gold
beads lay lightly, with a significant touch. She, like John, had an
innate gentleness of disposition. She distrusted her own power to judge.
"Maybe I might," said she faintly. "Oh, John, do you think I've got to?"
"It needn't be for long," answered John briefly, though he felt his eyes
moist with pity of her. "Mebbe you could stay a month?"
"Oh, I couldn't do that!" cried Lucy Ann, in wild denial. "I never could
in the world. If you'll make it a fortnight, an' harness up yourself,
an' bring me home, mebbe I might."
John gave his word, but when he took his leave of her, she leaned
forward into the dark, where the impatient horse was fretting, and made
her last condition.
"You'll let me turn the key on things here jest as they be? You won't
ask me to break up nuthin'?"
"Break up!" repeated John, with the intensity of an oath. "I guess you
needn't. If anybody puts that on you, you send 'em to me."
So Lucy Ann packed her mother's dresses into a little hair trunk that
had stood in the attic unused for many years, and went away to make her
visit. When she drove up to the house, sitting erect and slender in her
mother's cashmere shawl and black bonnet, Mary, watching from the
window, gave a little cry, as at the risen dead. John had told her
about Lucy Ann's transformation, but she put it all aside as a crazy
notion, not likely to last: now it seemed less a pathetic masquerade
than a strange bypath taken by nature itself.
The children regarded it with awe, and half the time called Lucy Ann
"grandma." That delighted her. Whenever they did it, she looked up to
say, with her happiest smile,--
"There! that's complete. You'll remember grandma, won't you? We mustn't
ever forget her."
Here, in this warm-hearted household, anxious to do her service in a way
that was not her own, she had some happiness, of a tremulous kind; but
it was all built up of her trust in a speedy escape. She knit mittens,
and sewed long seams; and every day her desire to fill the time was
irradiated by the certainty that twelve hours more were gone. A few more
patient intervals, and she should be at home. Sometimes, as the end of
her visit drew nearer, she woke early in the morning with a sensation of
irresponsible joy, and wondered, for an instant, what had happened to
her. Then it always came back, with an inward flooding she had scarcely
felt even in her placid youth. At home there would be so many things to
do, and, above all, such munificent leisure! For there she would feel no
need of feverish action to pass the time. The hours would take care of
themselves; they would fleet by, while she sat, her hands folded,
communing with old memories.
The day came, and the end of her probation. She trembled a good deal,
packing her trunk in secret, to escape Mary's remonstrances; but John
stood by her, and she was allowed to go.
"You'll get sick of it," called Mary after them. "I guess you'll be glad
enough to see the children again, an' they will you. Mind, you've got to
come back an' spend the winter."
Lucy Ann nodded happily. She could agree to anything sufficiently
remote; and the winter was not yet here.
The first day in the old house seemed to her like new birth in Paradise.
She wandered about, touching chairs and tables and curtains, the
manifest symbols of an undying past. There were loving duties to be
done, but she could not do them yet. She had to look her pleasure in the
face, and learn its lineaments.
Next morning came brother Ezra, and Lucy Ann hurried to meet him with an
exaggerated welcome. Life was never very friendly to Ezra, and those who
belonged to him had to be doubly kind. They could not change his luck,
but they might sweeten it. They said the world had not gone well with
him; though sometimes it was hinted that Ezra, being out of gear, could
not go with the world. All the rivers ran away from him, and went to
turn some other mill. He was ungrudging of John's prosperity, but still
he looked at it in some disparagement, and shook his head. His cheeks
were channeled long before youth was over; his feet were weary with
honest serving, and his hands grown hard with toil. Yet he had not
arrived, and John was at the goal before him.
"We heard you'd been stayin' with John's folks," said he to Lucy Ann.
"Leastways, Abby did, an' she thinks mebbe you've got a little time for
us now, though we ain't nothin' to offer compared to what you're used to
over there."
"I'll come," said Lucy Ann promptly. "Yes, I'll come, an' be glad to."
It was part of her allegiance to the one who had gone.
"Ezra needs bracin'," she heard her mother say, in many a sick-room
gossip. "He's got to be flattered up, an' have some grit put into him."
It was many weeks before Lucy Ann came home again. Cousin Rebecca, in
Saltash, sent her a cordial letter of invitation for just as long as she
felt like staying; and the moneyed cousin at the Ridge wrote in like
manner, following her note by a telegram, intimating that she would not
take no for an answer. Lucy Ann frowned in alarm when the first letter
came, and studied it by daylight and in her musings at night, as if some
comfort might lurk between the lines. She was tempted to throw it in
the fire, not answered at all. Still, there was a reason for going. This
cousin had a broken hip, she needed company, and the flavor of old
times. The other had married a "drinkin' man," and might feel hurt at
being refused. So, fortifying herself with some inner resolution she
never confessed, Lucy Ann set her teeth and started out on a visiting
campaign. John was amazed. He drove over to see her while she was
spending a few days with an aunt in Sudleigh.
"When you been home last, Lucy Ann?" asked he.
A little flush came into her face, and she winked bravely.
"I ain't been home at all," said she, in a low tone. "Not sence August."
John groped vainly in mental depths for other experiences likely to
illuminate this. He concluded that he had not quite understood Lucy Ann
and her feeling about home; but that was neither here nor there.
"Well," he remarked, rising to go, "you're gittin' to be quite a
visitor."
"I'm tryin' to learn how," said Lucy Ann, almost gayly. "I've been
a-cousinin' so long, I sha'n't know how to do anything else."
But now the middle of November had come, and she was again in her own
house. Cousin Titcomb had brought her there and driven away, concerned
that he must leave her in a cold kitchen, and only deterred by a looming
horse-trade from staying to build a fire. Lucy Ann bade him good-by,
with a gratitude which was not for her visit, but all for getting home;
and when he uttered that terrifying valedictory known as "coming again,"
she could meet it cheerfully. She even stood in the door, watching him
away; and not until the rattle of his wheels had ceased on the frozen
road, did she return to her kitchen and stretch her shawled arms
pathetically upward.
"I thank my heavenly Father!" said Lucy Ann, with the fervency of a
great experience.
She built her fire, and then unpacked her little trunk, and hung up the
things in the bedroom where her mother's presence seemed still to cling.
"I'll sleep here now," she said to herself. "I won't go out of this no
more."
Then all the little homely duties of the hour cried out upon her, like
children long neglected; and, with the luxurious leisure of those who
may prolong a pleasant task, she set her house in order. She laid out a
programme to occupy her days. The attic should be cleaned to-morrow. In
one day? Nay, why not three, to hold Time still, and make him wait her
pleasure? Then there were the chambers, and the living-rooms below. She
felt all the excited joy of youth; she was tasting anticipation at its
best.
"It'll take me a week," said she. "That will be grand." She could hardly
wait even for the morrow's sun; and that night she slept like those of
whom much is to be required, and who must wake in season. Morning came,
and mid-forenoon, and while she stepped about under the roof where dust
had gathered and bitter herbs told tales of summers past, John drove
into the yard. Lucy Ann threw up the attic window and leaned out.
"You put your horse up, an' I'll be through here in a second," she
called. "The barn's open."
John was in a hurry.
"I've got to go over to Sudleigh, to meet the twelve o'clock," said he.
"Harold's comin'. I only wanted to say I'll be over after you the night
before Thanksgivin'. Mary wants you should be sure to be there to
breakfast. You all right? Cephas said you seemed to have a proper good
time with them."
John turned skillfully on the little green and drove away. Lucy Ann
stayed at the window watching him, the breeze lifting her gray curls,
and the sun smiling at her. She withdrew slowly into the attic, and sank
down upon the floor, close by the window. She sat there and thought, and
the wind still struck upon her unheeded. Was she always to be subject to
the tyranny of those who had set up their hearth-stones in a more
enduring form? Was her home not a home merely because there were no men
and children in it? She drew her breath sharply, and confronted certain
problems of the greater world, not knowing what they were. To Lucy Ann
they did not seem problems at all. They were simply touches on the
individual nerve, and she felt the pain. Her own inner self throbbed in
revolt, but she never guessed that any other part of nature was
throbbing with it. Then she went about her work, with the patience of
habit. It was well that the attic should be cleaned, though the savor of
the task was gone.
Next day, she walked to Sudleigh, with a basket on her arm. Often she
sent her little errands by the neighbors; but to-day she was uneasy, and
it seemed as if the walk might do her good. She wanted some soda and
some needles and thread. She tried to think they were very important,
though some sense of humor told her grimly that household goods are of
slight use to one who goes a-cousining. Her day at John's would be
prolonged to seven; nay, why not a month, when the winter itself was not
too great a tax for them to lay upon her? In her deserted house, soda
would lose its strength, and even cloves decay. Lucy Ann felt her will
growing very weak within her; indeed, at that time, she was hardly
conscious of having any will at all.
It was Saturday, and John and Ezra were almost sure to be in town. She
thought of that, and how pleasant it would be to hear from the folks: so
much pleasanter than to be always facing them on their own ground, and
never on hers. At the grocery she came upon Ezra, mounted on a
wagon-load of meal-bags, and just gathering up the reins.
"Hullo!" he called. "You didn't walk?"
"Oh, I jest clipped it over," returned Lucy Ann carelessly. "I'm goin'
to git a ride home. I see Marden's wagon when I come by the
post-office."
"Well, I hadn't any expectation o' your bein' here," said Ezra. "I meant
to ride round to-morrer. We want you to spend Thanksgivin' Day with us.
I'll come over arter you."
"Oh, Ezra!" said Lucy Ann, quite sincerely, with her concession to his
lower fortunes, "why didn't you say so! John's asked me."
"The dogs!" said Ezra. It was his deepest oath. Then he drew a sigh.
"Well," he concluded, "that's our luck. We al'ays come out the leetle
end o' the horn. Abby'll be real put out. She 'lotted on it. Well,
John's inside there. He's buyin' up 'bout everything there is. You'll
git more'n you would with us."
He drove gloomily away, and Lucy Ann stepped into the store, musing. She
was rather sorry not to go to Ezra's, if he cared. It almost seemed as
if she might ask John to let her take the plainer way. John would
understand. She saw him at once where he stood, prosperous and hale, in
his great-coat, reading items from a long memorandum, while Jonathan
Stevens weighed and measured. The store smelled of spice, and the clerk
that minute spilled some cinnamon. Its fragrance struck upon Lucy Ann
like a call from some far-off garden, to be entered if she willed. She
laid a hand on her brother's arm, and her lips opened to words she had
not chosen:--
"John, you shouldn't ha' drove away so quick, t' other day. You jest
flung out your invitation an' run. You never give me no time to answer.
Ezra's asked me to go there."
"Well, if that ain't smart!" returned John. "Put in ahead, did he? Well,
I guess it's the fust time he ever got round. I'm terrible sorry, Lucy.
The children won't think it's any kind of a Thanksgivin' without you.
Somehow they've got it into their heads it's grandma comin'. They can't
seem to understand the difference."
"Well, you tell 'em I guess grandma's kind o' pleased for me to plan it
as I have," said Lucy Ann, almost gayly. Her face wore a strange,
excited look. She breathed a little faster. She saw a pleasant way
before her, and her feet seemed to be tending toward it without her own
volition. "You give my love to 'em. I guess they'll have a proper nice
time."
She lingered about the store until John had gone, and then went forward
to the counter. The storekeeper looked at her respectfully. Everybody
had a great liking for Lucy Ann. She had been a faithful daughter, and
now that she seemed, in so mysterious a way, to be growing like her
mother, even men of her own age regarded her with deference.